From BBC News: There will be 42 exhibits at the Art Festival this year. The festival kicked off with “a larger-than-life-sized devil’s head made from thousands of match heads” set on fire. On a less incendiary note, the National Gallery of Scotland is showing 50 portraits of the Queen, and “Turner prize-winner Martin Creed has transformed the landmark Scotsman Steps by cladding each of the 104 steps in a different colour of marble.”

From BBC News: “The Edinburgh Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival, with 2,542 shows in 258 venues over three weeks.” Some big names have performed at the festival; my favorites: Stephen Fry, Eddie Izzard, Jude Law, Emma Thompson, and Jimmy Carr. Shows can take place anywhere, from the streets to pubs to tents to concert halls, and 1/3 of the performances are comedy.

Alec Baldwin will be performing in Hamlet, but you won’t be able to actually see the “real” him – it’s a pre-recorded 3-D version. New this year is the cabaret category, which includes an act I saw lots of signs for when I lived in Brighton: The Lady Boys of Bangkok. And the all night performance of Hotel Madea will be six hours long and end with the audience and performers sharing breakfast.

This was the festival that started them all. From BBC News: Launched in 1947 as “a platform for the flowering of the human spirit,” the International Festival features classical music, opera, dance, and theatre with Asia as this year’s theme/inspiration.

Some of the shows I’d like to see this year are the one-man staging of King Lear (I mean, how would that work?), The Peony Pavilion by the National Ballet of China, Princess Bari – contemporary choreography of a Korean folk tale, and, yes, I’d like to see the fireworks show.

I didn’t have any idea that Edinburgh was the first UNESCO City of Literature. I didn’t even know that was a thing. The hosting of the book festival each year definitely played a part. From Edinburgh Festivals: “The tented garden in Charlotte Square entices 220,000 visitors every year, making the Edinburgh International Book Festival the largest public celebration of the written word in the world.” This year’s event will have 797 authors, many of whom are award winners, and 757 events.

Something that resonates with me as a traveler is the selection of new writing the festival commissioned on the theme of Elsewhere. You can read the 50 stories here.

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